Is your writing tutor overly aggressive about the passive?

Have you ever heard anyone say, "Do not use passive voice"? If you think this merited any real attention, I recommend thinking again. In the US, I think the anti-passive voice sentiment gained some of its momentum from a popular book called the Elements of Style. In the article, "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice", the author, Geoffrey K. Pullum, tells about the reference to passive voice in this popular book.

"Use the active voice" is a typical section head. And the section in question opens with an attempt to discredit passive clauses that is either grammatically misguided or disingenuous."

"Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented example of it deliberately designed to sound inept."

Still, it's important to maintain a balanced perspective. Here's what I mean: I have seen writing in which people use a passive voice sentence when it really seems that an active voice sentence is better. In such cases, an active voice sentence is better because a passive voice sentence seems to, somehow, make the writing, or the communication, less effective. With this in mind, I should say that I recall reading formal business email writing in which the writer used passive voice so many times that the writing seemed, at least, a little strange. I brought this to the writer's attention, and while the writer agreed that the use of passive voice was excessive, the writer, also, said that this is a regular way of communicating at the company because, at the company, sometimes it's not good to say "who does what" or "who did what", especially if whatever someone did seems not to have been the best thing to do. So she was compelled to use passive voice more often than should have been necessary so as to not draw attention to individuals. This, of course, is an artificial use of passive voice, and such use is brought about by people having to be careful about what they say and how they say it.

"So she was compelled to use passive voice more often than should have been necessary so as to not draw attention to individuals."

There's nothing wrong with using passive voice in the above sentence even though it's possible to use active voice. The reason passive voice comes about is that there seems to not be a way to identify "who compels her" or "who does the compelling". The circumstance compels her. The circumstance does the compelling, and that's abstract. People do the compelling, also, but there's no way to really identify specific individuals who compel someone to use passive voice. Therefore, it easily, and without any thought, occurs to me to use passive voice in that sentence, and there's nothing wrong with it at all. Just the same, here's the same sentence with active voice, but it just does not seem to have the same effect as passive voice, which, in this sentence, is better.

"So the circumstance compelled her to use passive voice more often than should have been necessary so as to not draw attention to individuals." Starting in paragraph seven of "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice", the author, Geoffrey K. Pullum, tells about the reference to passive voice in the popular book, The Elements of Style.

"Use the active voice" is a typical section head. And the section in question opens with an attempt to discredit passive clauses that is either grammatically misguided or disingenuous."

"Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented example of it deliberately designed to sound inept."

"They give good examples to show that the choice between active and passive may depend on the topic under discussion."

"Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-circle everything that looks like a passive, just as Microsoft Word's grammar checker underlines every passive in wavy green to signal that you should try to get rid of it. That overinterpretation is part of the damage that Strunk and White have unintentionally done."

Remember that there's nothing wrong with using passive voice. You just have to use it when it's appropriate and logical to do so.